If you woke up tomorrow, and your internet looked like this, what would you do? Imagine all your favorite websites taking forever to load, while you get annoying notifications from your ISP suggesting you switch to one of their approved “Fast Lane” sites.Think about what we would lose: all the weird, alternative, interesting, and enlightening stuff that makes the Internet so much cooler than mainstream Cable TV. What if the only news sites you could reliably connect to were the ones that had deals with companies like Comcast and Verizon?On September 10th, just a few days before the FCC’s comment deadline, public interest organizations are issuing an open, international call for websites and internet users to unite for an “Internet Slowdown” to show the world what the web would be like if Team Cable gets their way and trashes net neutrality. Net neutrality is hard to explain, so our hope is that this action will help SHOW the world what’s really at stake if we lose the open Internet.If you’ve got a website, blog or tumblr, get the code to join the #InternetSlowdown here: https://battleforthenet.com/sept10thEveryone else, here’s a quick list of things you can do to help spread the word about the slowdown: http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/96020972118/be-a-part-of-the-great-internet-slowdown Get creative! Don’t let us tell you what to do. See you on the net September 10th!

Couple weeks ago, from June 9th to June 15th it’s a busy week for our beloved video game industry, there are 2 different worldwide important event, at least it’s important for me, it’s E3 and Dreamhack Summer. E3 is the world’s biggest video games industry event and Dreamhack is European biggest LAN party. On E3, of course, many 1st party and 3rd party announcement being made, it’s a really important event for many video games enthusiast worldwide. At Dreamhack Summer, a lot of game tournaments being held there and most of big names on esports scene been always attends Dreamhack.

Now let’s talk about E3. On this year’s E3, there’s a lot about the games, the software games I mean, they really all talks about their games, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony of course. First, I like how Microsoft do their briefing, now I have a lot of respect to them, when they starts the briefing, they said that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony comes to E3 for the same purpose, gaming. I really like that, they choose to not trash talking about their competitors, they really want make the audience to feel that Microsoft is a good guy, not like Sony that always said ‘best experience only on playstation 4’ or something like that when they talking about a multiplatform game. Then there’s a game that I really want to play on Xbox One, it’s Sunset Overdrive, that’s really a cool game. But still, I really disappointed that they don’t tell anything about new Gears or Halo, they just talk about a new remaster collection of old Halo games.

Next is about Sony, they sure really a piece of shit fuck sonofabitch, really, once again, like every other years before, they always said that they are the best Playstation 4 are the best experience you will have for every game you play on it. They undirectly trash talks about their competitors, again. And you know what, surprise surprise, they officially said that they ditched their support for their own handheld console that they always praise, the Vita. They announce a handheld game that every Sony fans really wanted, FF Type-0 but they announce it for PS4, WTF dude? Really? It’s for PSP for fuck’s sake, why do you want it on PS4? No one wants it on PS4. So there’s a #novitanobuy were born that day. I really don’t know what I’m writing here about sony, the point is I really don’t like them now.

The least but now least, Nintendo, instead of doing a live media briefing, this year, again, they did the pre-recorded stuff like last year, but this year they uses their stage for Super Smash Bros biggest party ever. They held an invitational tournament for the pros like Evil Geniuses’ PPMD and CT ZeRo. The crowds are really awesome, Nintendo really know how to build the hype for the fans, it’s the first step that Nintendo take for their support for eSports. It’s a great move that Nintendo take to make people forgive them about what happen in last year’s Evo and Nintendo want to make sure that people trust them to support the eSports scene. The pre-recorded stuff, it was really awesome, for the first time they introduce the WiiU very Zelda game and it’s really a killer. And many other games like Splatoon, a competitive shooter game that I really want it to make into eSports scene. Then Itagaki’s Valhalla first game have been announced exclusively for WiiU, Devil’s Third, a great game. For E3 this year, I just said that Nintendo simply wins it, they owns this year E3. Period.

And I dreamed about having a lot of free time and a lot of money so on week days I go to E3 and at the week end I go to Dreamhack, that’s really my dream LOL.

This article doesn’t contain anything about video games or esports, this is about international comic scene that I assume that we need to know about it too because comics are taking a big part of creative industry and it’s really close to our beloved video games industry, many games are made from or made for comics. There are a lot of comics based on a game or a game based on comic even movie industry have done the same thing, comic scene is old, video game is young enough to learn a thing or more from what comic industry done past in several dozen years, but the first thing is, I like comics 😀 it’s like, who doesn’t right? Everybody loves comics with their own taste, there are a lot of different kinds of comic in this world, a lot of different sequential arts that people know and enjoy today. So this is my first article about comic, and this is my first experience participating in an international conference.

ISC is an annual conference held by IMRC (International Manga Research Center – Kyoto Seika University) at international scale. This conference talks about comics, all kind of comics, eastern comics, western comics, manga, manhua, all of them. This year’s ISC held at Bandung, my hometown. There’s a lot of comic artists, mangakas, authors, publishers, researchers, critics, curators, and professors from around the world comes to attend this conference, they were mostly have a major in comic or art but some people don’t, they just love it and care about it, they love sequential arts like comics. Like me, I have a great chance to come to this kind of conference even though I don’t have any art background and I’m not a comic author, but I love comics really much so I’m really glad and excited to participate the conference.

In this year’s ISC, the title of the conference is ‘Comics Alternatives: From Graphic Diary to Manga Style’. It’s discuss about how comics are drawn, what style do they choose to make a comic, what kind of story telling do they choose and other thing about the style that people chose to make their comics. Just like many comics that we have read from many places like Japan, North America, Germany, France, Indonesia, Singapore, etc. There are so many different styles. Some artist want to draws his/her comic with manga style and a diary like story telling even though he/she isn’t from Japan, manga style drawing is so popular these days, here in Indonesia it’s so popular, Japan origin translated comics or it’s called manga are the most popular kind of comics here, like Naruto the most mainstream manga here in Indonesia, even supir angkot (local public transport driver) reads it, they love it.

Inside the conference, every panelist that talk in front of the hall have their own different issue and different discussion, almost all of their discussion are interesting for me, maybe because I’m not that familiar with comic scene or doesn’t know there so much interesting issue on comic industry nowadays, I do know some history of comic books around the world like the story of DC comics and the Comic Code Authority, development of Japanese manga after Tezuka and so on but I never know there much more about comic industry nowadays other than its market. First let’s talk about Indonesian comic scene, as far as I follow the talks during the discussions, there’s many different comic style in here, like in Yogyakarta, a lot of alternative comics style there, the unusual one, their style is very unique with some suggestive themes like politics, religion and other local social problems. They even have a very funny pig cartoon, I lol’ed so much when I saw that picture even now when I remember it, it’s still very funny for me. Next thing that I interested is about wayang, as we know wayang is one of Indonesia’s heritage that every people know and the most popular thing that comic artists takes to be a comic. Wayang is a thing that comes from Java region, but the fact is Indonesia is more than just Java region, there are so many more culture that we can talk from other regions, so during the discussion about wayang, they talk about Indonesian identity on a comic, what makes a comic looks and feels like so Indonesian, what uniqueness it had on its content when we compare it with other’s comic. It’s so interesting. So many interesting talks in the conference, but these two things really caught my attention. Then, one of the researcher from Indonesia discuss about how girls frame themselves in Indonesia’s girls’ comic but many people from Germany, Japan and other south east Asia told him that his research are really a sensitive case because the research are about something feels too sexist.

Then let’s talk about international comic scene, many artists and scholars come from many countries, there are from Japan, Germany, Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, US, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Main Land China. Everybody has their own interesting subject to discuss although researchers from Japan can’t make me curious about their subject, I don’t know maybe because their English is hard to understand or the long slides are confusing me, but overall there are many interesting subjects. Many artists and researchers from South East Asia are presenting their subjects, like the from Manila, Elbert OR, comic artist, my favorite person in this conference, he is so funny that I always laugh when he start to explain something and there’s a researcher Karl Ian, they told us that in Philippines, comics are so expensive, and mainstream comic are depending on its distribution and price, more cheaper the comic is, more popular it gets. Rest of the issue are much the same as in Indonesia, like hard to find a good comic books, no one support local comic artist, lack of alternatives genre, poor development on local comic scene, and so on. Same thing happen in Vietnam, Phong from Hanoi talk about local comic development in Vietnam, at war time, local comic artist create a comic for propaganda purpose and even today there are still many propaganda comics in Vietnam.

Different things happened in Singapore and Malaysia, in those two countries, local comic artists are supported by their government, like in Malaysia, local comic artist have life insurance and a sufficient salary and payment so they can have a good life being a comic artist, animator and other creative professions. In Singapore, the government is having a special program to support their comic artist; many comics are published by their own government. So there is a good future for creative professionals in Malaysia and Singapore, no wonder that Tecmo Koei, Lucas Art and many big game developers or studios and major game publishers built their branch in Singapore and Malaysia. Lim Cheng Tju are a professional comic critic from Singapore, he’s the one of many comic related professionals from Singapore, when he talk or ask something, from my perspective he always have a great point of view and great knowledge about comics all around the world. He’s good.

Other thing that we discuss is about comic scene in Japan, there is two type comic in Japan, there are Manga and Gekiga although I don’t know how tell the different yet but they define Gekiga as alternative manga, there are many deep discussion on this, that I can’t write it all here, but it’s very interesting to know that how complicated are manga business in Japan and how its develop from World War II until now. Artists from Japan talks about their comic, there is Est Em, a Yaoi / BL manga artist talk about what the different about it, about homosexual and / or homosocial on her manga. We have a Japanese curator from Louvre Museum too. And then we have Yokoyama Yuichi, a Gekiga artist, an alternative manga artist, his comic is so unique, I love it, his works are really really interesting. His mangas are so unusual; all I can say is his works are the REAL sequential art. You totally should check it, google it!! Right now!!

From another part of the world, there is Li Chitak from Hong Kong, the author of the original manhua Black Mask (Hap Hak), and then it’s adapted to a movie starring Jet Li as the Black Mask. There are two Black Mask movies has been released. The interesting thing that he pointed is about Chinese history influence on their local comics and he explains about how to differentiate Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and about their culture too. And there is Akru from Taiwan, she told us about her work and it’s development, manga is the style that she chose for her comics, I come late to her panel so I don’t really know and remember much about her presentation, as far as I know her drawing are really good. From Germany, Carolin Walch, I don’t remember it too well but I’m sure she talks about how alternative comic runs on Germany and about what people in Germany like from comic, about their publishers too. And from the US, there is Monica Chiu, an Asian American researcher from New Hampshire talk about the Visual Rhetoric in Asian American Graphic Narratives, she talk about how Asian people drawn at American comics and other racial problem on comic scene, it’s really interesting but unfortunately she has limited time so the discussion must end. When we look at her face, he’s so bule (foreign / Caucasian) for us but she said that her face is so Asian back in New Hampshire.

Finally, what I get from this international conference, now I know that cell phones are really affecting wireless microphone and I know a Singaporean swearing word : Ka ni na. LOL just kidding. There are many things that happen in comic / manga scene around the world, they even research it with scientific method there. It is really great to have people from around the world with different language gather in same hall talk, share and discuss about things that we love, we really enthusiastic about it, there some mistranslation too but that’s what interesting that happen in there, I feel so lucky to be there. That’s all I can say, thanks for reading my article.

As we all have known that those big 3 (Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft) have their own hall and their own large stages to do media briefings in E3 every years although there are many other media briefings or press conferences are held there, usually it’s EA’s and Ubisoft’s. E3, It is all about the excitement, to wait for a surprising news to come from the big 3 and other publishers in their media briefings. This year, Nintendo doesn’t have a live media briefing that held on the E3 stage like the others two, Nintendo said that they don’t have anything to discuss in a big press conference so they decided to held another episodic Nintendo Direct with E3 theme and some other features like playable demo at Best Buy across the US, I think that’s a great decision to make, otherwise, people will feel disappointed if there is nothing interesting news for their fans.

This year isn’t a Nintendo’s year (it’s a Luigi year XD), Nintendo doesn’t have anything to announce, for me it’s pretty boring to watch E3’s Nintendo Direct, there’s no new announcement for Nintendo’s consoles but at least they can make people happy by showing a new trailer for X (the game from Monolith Soft) and a game play trailer for Bayonetta 2, at least those two trailers makes me happy. Don’t forget the new Super Smash Bros’ first time reveal too, I think that’s the most exciting thing that Nintendo bring on E3’s Nintendo Direct.

This year, Microsoft and Sony have their big announcements after they reveal their new-gen systems –PS4 and Xbox One several months ago. For me, PS4 and Xbox One they are practically the same, it has a same hardware capabilities (as far as I know about their system specs like CPU clocks, RAM size and the GPU even I haven’t heard the details about it, but I know that both GPUs has DirectX 11 features). Now we discuss about the hardware, both of them uses 8-core AMD’s APU technology so it’s an x86 processor (CISC type), it’s a PC or a laptop/notebook processors with custom specs, and then later AMD announce a new line of hardware (APUs) for PC that uses same technology as PS4/Xbox One’s will be released this year. As for the RAM, both of them have 8GB of RAM, it will be shared for graphics memory.

So… it’s basically a PC, with a full capabilities of processing DirectX 11 features and full compatibility exclusive hardware just like all consoles did, developers don’t need to do anything for the hardware compatibility, so even the CPU has low clock speed, it will do fine. Next-gen consoles are a complex piece of hardware, so I think it needs a CISC processor to do all of the complex work. Just like PC, next-gen consoles now have many capabilities of processing advance features like tessellation, volumetric lights and stuff just like PC nowadays and the result are pretty good, it got a great photorealistic graphic, and it’s a full HD experience where the game will be presented in full HD 1080p native resolution, because on current-gen consoles, PS3 and Xbox360, 1080p is only the output you get in the screen, not the native resolution of a game, the game itself only have 720p resolution and the hardware do the upscale process to adjust on your 1080p screen, so practically it’s not a full HD presentation. No wonder if you saw any jaggiest graphic and sometimes it’s really blurry for some games because of the low native resolution.

Both of them uses AMD’s APU technology, a technology that combine the CPU and the GPU on 1 die of processor. Thanks to the x86 processor, it’s easier for developer to develop a game because of the same processor architecture both consoles and PC where developers develop the game, even it attracts indie developers to develop a game on next-gen consoles. On this year’s E3, almost every playable next-gen game demos are run on PC, even when they presenting it on the media briefing, like EA’s media briefing, their games clearly run on PC, every time they show the games and the staff playing it on the stage, we can always see that they play it on PC even when they hold a controller but there are keyboard and mouse on the desk, they never really show the consoles running it. So, is there any impact for PC gamer? Of course there are many good thing for PC gamers now, because of the same architecture, it will be easier for developer to release the game to PC because basically they develop it for x86 hardware, it doesn’t need to do the port, maybe just adding some hardware compatibility then it will be okay 😀 (although in the reality isn’t that simple XD). Especially for AMD processors like FX series or A series and AMD Radeon GPUs, maybe the best choice for today’s game or next-gen game because of the same code they use for next-gen AMD based console. Even for WiiU, the not-too-next-gen console from Nintendo uses AMD GPU, but not for the CPU, it uses IBM PowerPC (RISC type), it uses different architecture than PS4 and Xbox One. PS3, Wii and Xbox360 use IBM PowerPC processor. Nintendo does have a different approach with their product. So it settled then, AMD is the winner of this generation, yaaaay (I’m using an AMD GPU, but with an Intel CPU, yaaaaay? Right?)

In defend of Nintendo WiiU, after Nintendo saw what their competitor’s did, they all have the facility to make developers easier to create a game because of the x86 architecture, then Nintendo release the Nintendo Web Framework at GDC 2013, it is a tool for developers that will help their x86 game or any other architecture like ARM translated to WiiU’s processor architecture using the HTML5, JavaScript or CSS. You can create a game using it too you know. Then again Nintendo create an exclusive partnership with Unity Engine so that the Unity software will have WiiU feature that developers need to create a game for WiiU using DirectX 10.1 API. Smart move, Nintendo! This thing will attract indie developers too. For new-gen consoles, indie developers are something important that will help them to sell their consoles.

Back to PS4 and Xbox One, both consoles are great, they have their own exclusive content and features to offer and a lot of funny things happened in E3. As maybe you have seen or read on any headlines about E3, maybe there are some problem between PS4 and Xbox One. Several days before E3, Microsoft has informed their regulation about how a user uses an Xbox One, it’s really depressing how they regulate their users, it’s has so many rules that makes people upset, the DRM are really depressing, most of them are about how you play with a used game copy and it’s really important for most player, it’s part of many people habit to buy an used copy because of many things that prevent them to buy a new copy. And when Microsoft does their media briefing, they offer so many exclusive games that really interesting many people and the show goes well, they got a lot of positive response from public. Then after that, Sony does their media briefing, and it all happened. In my opinion, Sony doesn’t offer many things about exclusives for the PS4, so many old IP, titles like Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy XV are meant to be a PS4 exclusives but no, Square Enix make it for Xbox One too, so I think that PS4 doesn’t have any significant exclusive title that can compete with Xbox One’s. So what makes PS4 looks greater than Xbox One? Sony telling the audience on their speech that PS4 doesn’t have all the complicated DRM like Xbox One, they really telling all of their advantage about the DRM than Xbox One did. I think they did it like a child, they bashing their competitor with their features to get supports from their audiences, that’s why I don’t like Sony, they always bashing their competitors to make a great advertisement, which is their nature. But still, PS4 is a great console, PS4 is region free and DRM-less and that is a good thing, a really good thing. That’s why people mock Xbox One a lot today; even Nintendo’s fan did it too. I think Microsoft have a different point of view about the game market, they used to be selling and producing computers software so they do what they did on their computers software, it’s called DRM (Digital Rights Management).

That’s all of my impressions of this year’s E3, so many things happened on E3, some of them are good, some of them are bad, makes people upset and many other exciting things beside what I have written here that I can’t write them all. But it’s really interesting that we have new-gen console coming this year’s holiday and this year’s E3 is the first step to knowing how things will go in this new-gen consoles war. Thanks for reading my article.

June 20, 2013

UPDATE: Microsoft is removing Xbox One’s DRM, today Microsoft did the right thing. So, I think it’s really intense now, I just thought that we already have known who will be down first on this new-gen war. It’s pretty interesting now to know that Xbox One have a great chance to win the market.

Earth goes spinning and so does everything on it, people changes, world changes, everything changes, for better or worst. So does the videogame industry that we love, it changes to a worst condition and situation (that’s my opinion). As we know, dedicated game devices today are not as popular as back in ours generation, especially for gaming handhelds like Nintendo’s 3DS and Sony’s Playstation Vita.

Major game developers too, they change their way of business, now they really focus on social games (for Japanese game devs) and free to play games (for western game devs). Free games (and social games) are really popular on mobile platform like iOS and Android and it’s really a big deal nowadays, most people have those devices like iPads, iPhones, iPods and Android phones , tablets like Samsung’s Galaxy series, LG’s Optimus series, HTC and many more, kids nowadays are more familiar with mobile devices games better than gaming handheld. Even now nVidia, the leading GPU hardware developer, making their own Android based gaming handheld, the Shield, even it more like multimedia handheld but they describe it as a gaming device that has the ability to stream a PC game with a nVidia GPU powered PC and cloud gaming service. Shield is pretty neat though, especially for the tegra zone, google play like service that provide Shield exclusive games, it has really promising titles.

And then we have Ouya, the first ‘hackable’ and open source console they said, that based on Android too so basically the Ouya is an Android device so again we can call it a mobile device. Ouya’s shape is interesting, it has cute little cube shaped packaging and it can be opened easily for hacking purpose. We don’t have many information about what the hardware specs are or exclusive titles, as we know many major game developers and publishers are really glad about Ouya and already signed in for developing an Ouya’s game. And I guessed most of the games will be a free to play games or social games.

The problem is, we, core gamers, hardly enjoyed mini games and free games (not mentioning eSport free games like Dota 2, LoL, Team Fortress 2, etc), we need more challenging difficulty, exciting story and deep gameplay, those things will never happen in a free or a social games. Even it has the same name as the main game like battlefield, dead space, street fighter, king of fighter, etc, but actually they just a dumbed down port of the main games, even worse, it just borrow the title and the concept then develop a game base on it and the result usually have a totally different content, not even close with the real one. Most major publishers are really interesting about this, they began to create and publish many free games and social games based on their successful franchise. They make those game more often than making the real game because those games are more profitable than making the real game and if this thing happen continuously, we core gamer, will extinct.

Kids today don’t know any core games, they just know games like temple run, angry birds, where’s my water, fruit ninja and any other that kind of games. As we young, we play pokemon on our handheld, dragon quest, harvest moon and other ‘real’ games so we grow with a great taste of game better than kids today. And it became worst, most common people only know that kind of game and they will never introduce their child in the future to the ‘real’ game and that’s what will make us extinct, there’s really few of core gamer today and if this things keep happening there will be more few of us in the future.

What will we gonna do now? Game console will extinct too if this keep happening, look at CES last week, world will become a social games heaven and that’s not a heaven that we wished for. I’m glad that today eSports are developing really well and doing really great, I guess we just hoping that the PC platform will keep the core gamer alive.

this year, it’s 2012, some people believe that 2012 are the end of the world and some people don’t. alot of us have different experience up until today. and for me, ofcourse, this year is a worse year ever in my whole life but yet, in may 2nd I experienced a great night in my whole life. the 1st time ever I go to live music concert, the one of my favorite band, a japanese band, an old rock band, L’Arc~en~Ciel are came to Jakarta-Indonesia. at fucking last, my long awaited dream come true, i have dream of this concert since im at mid school and that night is one of the best nigth ever in my fucking life, im really feel greatful, thank God for letting me on the concert. long live the J-Music!!!

I have never been so excited like that night, I already take the risk and i will never regret it. a night that i’ll never forget ever in my whole life. best feeling ever in my life.